Mr. Xi Jinping Is a Japan Basher

General Hideki Tojo, when the Tokyo Trial judges called him to appear before the court

China’s President Xi Jinping made an unsubstantiated, slanderous comment at a recent conference in Berlin, Germany. He accused the Japanese army of killing 300,000 Chinese when it captured Nanking in 1937 as if it were a fact.

Mr. Xi has used the history card to take stabs at Japan, but recently he’s really been getting out of line.

In January, China built a memorial hall for Ahn Jung-Geun, the terrorist who assassinated the Japan’s first Prime Minister, Hirobumi Ito, at Harbin Station. In February, it designated December 13th, the day of the capture of Nanking, as “a national mourning day for the victims of the Nanking Massacre.”

In March, the Chinese government officially stated for the first time that it has not abandoned its people’s claims for postwar compensation, which were supposedly abandoned in the Japan-China joint statement. In April, one month after the announcement, a court in Shanghai decided since there hadn’t been any compensation since the Japan-China war, the Chinese were justified in their recent seizure of a Mitsui tanker ship.

The Threats from China Won’t Stop

In June, China submitted material to UNESCO relating to the Nanking Massacre and the supplying of Comfort Women to the Japanese military for UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” project. In July, Mr. Xi spoke at Korea’s Seoul University, and he called for a united front against Japan. He stated, “The Imperial Japanese military engaged Korea and China in a brutal war of aggression.”

However, keeping in mind that the Nanking Incident and the movement of comfort women to where the troops were stationed, which have been the current reasons for Mr. Xi’s harsh judgments and statements, were in fact fictitious creations from the minds of vindictive military personnel that represented the victorious nations at the end of the war. Thus, the Japanese of today must finally voice some counter arguments.

At This Point in Time, Protecting Japan Means Waging a Battle over the Historical Record

On territorial issues, too, China has been insisting that the Senkaku Islands are Chinese territory because Ryukyu (Okinawa) was an independent country when China had a tributary system. In this context, if Japan were to accept China’s fictional history and to apologize, then China would capture Senkaku and Okinawa, and the international community would never properly understand the issues, and think, “Well, Japan must’ve taken them from China in the first place.” After such a reaction, the international community would never assist Japan again related to any of China’s aggressive, foreign policy initiatives to expand its territory.

The fights over correct historical perspectives are battles to protect the nation, and if Japan loses these battles, then there’s a chance that the losses will send the country into ruin.

To have China and America lift their false “accusations” surrounding events such as the Nanking Incident, do you have any ideas on what the people of Japan should do? The Liberty writers would like to know what you’re thinking, but in the meantime, they’ve come up with a few good thoughts for you to consider.

① Repudiating the Lies in the History Books Will Never Be Enough

In the new editions of history books for school children, there might be lines such as the Japanese military massacred 300,000 people in Nanking because Mr. Xi made such an announcement, and there are still some old textbooks that conjure up other lies related to that particular incident.

Since the Chinese are spreading untruths all over the world, and people from various countries are buying into them, it’s actually not even enough for Japan to erase them from the textbooks. The people of Japan ought to speak out and say, “Over the years of investigation and research, scholars have not been able to prove beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that a massacre at Nanking actually happened. Indeed, it was a work of fiction that the victorious nations created.”

② The Media Has Been Misinforming the Public and Circulating “Disinformation”

The Asahi Newspaper has played a huge role in the spread of the fake story surrounding the Nanking Incident domestically, and it began with journalist Katsuichi Honda’s series named “Travels in China” in 1971.

Mr. Honda wrote articles that described the Imperial Japanese Army’s “brutality”, and naively believed the testimonies of the witnesses that the Chinese Communist Party provided. However, scholars have since determined that Mr. Honda wrote his articles without any background investigation of his sources.

His left-wing propaganda is still in circulation, claiming that there was, in fact, a massacre at Nanking. The Asahi Newspaper should recognize Mr. Honda’s mistakes, and apologize to the Japanese people. It should assure Japan that there was no “massacre”, and correct the masochistic historical perspective that the Japanese have unfortunately inherited. The media should be a part of the solution for the negative view of Japan that has been spreading through the world at the moment; it shouldn’t be a part of the problem.

③ Revise the Government’s View

According to Japan’s Foreign Ministry, “The Japanese government believes that we can not deny that there were killings of noncombatants and looting after the entry of the Japanese army into Nanking (in 1937).”

This is the Japanese government’s view on the Nanking Incident. If we accept the words literally, it can only be said that the Japanese government recognizes that the massacre did occur.

Japanese government officials ought to insist, “There were casualties on both sides, both Chinese and Japanese people died during the battle of Nanking, but there was no massacre of civilians or prisoners.”

④ Japanese Leaders Must Engage the Chinese in a Series of Debates

Politicians ought to insist on the truth regarding the historical record. China, under President Xi’s leadership, has been attacking Japan in a battle over historical fact and fiction. Japanese politicians, under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s leadership, should have been preparing counter arguments and should have already challenged China’s historical assertions in a series of public debates between the two countries. Of course, scholars and researchers should join in as well.

Most importantly, every Japanese person should now insist that the Nanking Incident was not a massacre, and the idea that the military forced women intro prostitution was a lie made up after the war. They should tell the people that they know about the truth, and change public opinion for posterity’s sake. It’s not only up to the elected officials to do this job. It’s every Japanese person’s responsibility to counter the false accusations, which the Americans and Chinese made.